Throw Shade:
To talk trash about a friend or acquaintance, to publicly denounce or disrespect someone.
When throwing shade it’s immediately obvious to on-lookers that the thrower, and not the throwee, is the bitchy, uncool one.
“How does Barbara keep any friends? Last night at the party all she did was throw shade at people.”
~Urban Dictionary
Fucking Barbara.
We All know a “Barbara”, right? And maybe…on occasion… we have to admit to being a “Barbara”—but that’s beside the point.
This is about shade—and my Shadar, as I like to call it.
Just like the French cheese in my fridge, the dead rat in my attic, and a dog fart, I can smell shade coming from a mile away!
I can’t explain it. It’s one of the superpowers I’ve developed in my close to sixty years on the planet. I keep it in the same holster as my Gaydar, right next to my BS Detector.
So, in the parking lot on my way to do something I absolutely SUCK at, I could already feel my shadar going off. No worries, my guy Larry will be there, I told myself. Larry is as old as an eight-track tape deck and that comes in handy because that is the exact decade where my understanding regarding anything tech resides.
Larry is patient and kind and not judgy at all. Larry understands me.
But apparently, Larry had the audacity to retire.
Anyway, There I was—at Kinkos—to make copies of my screenplay. Now, that sounds easy enough, right? How hard could it be?
But for me, using the giant, state-of-the-art copiers they have in the “Self Serve” section is so far above my field of expertise that I may as well be launching a rocket ship to Mars. Seriously.
I get so flustered that I’m almost tempted to have the fellas at the printing desk print them for me—except for the fact that I want to make my mortgage payment this month and I can’t afford to do both.
So, Self Service it will have to be.
I got myself all set up. Great! I reassured me, That only took forty minutes.
After I swiped my credit card I pressed the big green START button on the printer. It shuddered and moaned and asked for more.
Having already entered more information than ANYONE, ANYWHERE, has EVER needed from me, I acquiesced because somehow, this seemed pertinent.
FILL PAPER—STUPID, it demanded. (I may have added the stupid part.)
Oh, shit! Right. Paper! I looked around clueless.
That’s when I saw them. Or rather I felt their shade. Three young Latinas clad in blue Kinkos smocks, all gathered up in a huddle, clucking, and snickering and looking my way.
There it was. Shade. Thrown.
I looked one of them straight in the eye. The pretty one with the bright magenta lipstick (which I’m sure was in direct violation of the Kinkos dress code. Just sayin’). She stopped her laugh in mid Ha and feigned concern.
“Whatareyoutryingtodooverthere?” she asked in a language I’d never heard before.
“I need to print some copies…uh…of a screenplay.”
The three of them rolled their eyes so dramatically that I think I felt the earth shift on its axis. Adhering to an unspoken bitches covenant, the other two turned away.
Magenta Lips had spoken to me. I was her problem now.
But not without throwing a bit more of the worst kind of shade. Latina shade.
“It says here I need paper, ha, imagine that! Paper for copies!” I chuckled in this self-effacing way I have that annoys most people.
“Yeah”, she said taking a look at my script. “Youneedthreeholedpaper”, she spit out in her special dialect.
I had no idea what she’d said so I just stood there, frozen.
“You need the paper with three holes on the side”, she yelled, exasperated. “You have to buy it. Go! Get paper!”
I took off running like a contestant on The Amazing Race and then stopped mid-stride. “Where is it?” I asked, already out of breath.
“There!” she threw her head to the left where another thirty-five thousand square feet of Kinkos yawned in the distance.
“Could you be more specific?” I asked, suppressing the urge to run back over and bite her in the face.
Her two other “sales associates” were back. They had settled in over by the stationary section to watch the 1:30 showing of:
A Dufas Makes Copies.
Shade was everywhere. It had turned total solar eclipse dark all around my copier.
I tried to shrug it off, loading the appropriate paper while my lovely Kinkos associate worked the complicated keypad like she was bringing the warp-drive online aboard the Starship Enterprise.
“There. I set it up for you”, she huffed as she walked back toward the coven.
I tried my best. I really did.
But eventually, I made so many mistakes that my Visa card’s fraud department alerted me on my phone to the fact that a schizophrenic serial copier had gotten a hold of my card—and subsequently—they froze my account. (See screen-shot above)
Oh, now Visa shade? Whatever.
When I finally finished, I prayed to God Almighty that those bitches had nothing to do with the in-store FedEx department since I had to ship a copy. But as I traversed the store my Shadar picked up the cool chill even before I saw her.
Magenta lips snickered in the corner, throwing her shade, while Debbie, a lovely, middle-aged but clearly confused and jittery victim of Stockholm’s Syndrome, patiently guided my dumb ass through the shipping process.
I smiled sweetly at Magenta Bitch the entire time, mouthing the words thank you in her direction.
At the end, I blew her a kiss. Not Debbie, although she probably needed one, Magenta, the shade thrower and her coven of bitches.
It was like throwing water on a wicked witch. They all melted. Not really. I wish. The three of them just freaked out and scattered.
I’m not sure there’s a lesson here. I just have one parting thought. Magenta Lips may have had some fierce lipstick—but my false eyelashes kicked hers to the curb.
Shade returned….and…scene.
Carry on,
xox
